Irish Special Forces (the Army Ranger Wing) operated in Western-occupied Afghanistan under NATO command, it was revealed last month, thanks to TD Clare Daly’s parliamentary question. The story received no media coverage. The operational purpose of these troops was not revealed. However, like Special Forces the world over, it was not pencils they were sharpening.

On December 7 1922, Pádraic Ó Máille TD and his friend Sean Hales TD of Cork, walked out of a hotel on Ormonde Quay, by Dublin’s river Liffy. They just had lunch, and were on their way back to the Dáil in Leinster House, a short drive away. Ó Máille, Galway city and Connemara’s first TD, had been appointed Leas Ceann Comhairle (deputy speaker ).

GALWAY MUSICAL Society encamps in The Black Box Theatre for the first week of May with its bravura staging of The Hired Man, which is based on Melvyn Bragg's stirring novel of Cumbrian rural and industrial working life.

In January of this year, Lieutenant Colonel Caimin Keogh assumed command of An Chéad Cath battalion in Renmore’s Dún Uí Mhaoilíosa Barracks. As a Galway-man Lt Colonel Keogh is immensely proud to lead his home-town battalion, as he told me when I sat down with him in his office on Monday afternoon.